Posts Tagged ‘kick-off’

I recently attended the regional Scrum Gathering for 2016 in Cape Town. This is a post in a series on the talks that I attended. All posts are based on the sketch-notes that I took in the sessions.

This talk focused largely on the Contextsection of the Agile Charter, which is meant to be a living set of artifacts and sessions that help a team clarify their Purpose, Context and Alignment. Alignment, in particular, is a part that will probably adjust frequently as team members interact: often daily. The hypothesis is that a team that starts well may not necessarily finish well; but a team that does not start well will never finish well. In other words, a good kick-off is required for (a team) to lift-off.

The first part of Contextis “Boundaries and Interactions“. This is understanding who your team members are; how you will interact with each other; how you will interact with others who are not in the non-core team; who these non-core team parties are; and how we will communicate over differences. Steve described one cool activity to kick this off. For the core team, have everyone create a name-card with a photo/image, their name, their talent, and one fun fact. The team places these cards in the center of a sheet of sorts and then draws a boundary around the group. This indicates the boundary between the core team and anyone who isn’t in the core team.

The team then discusses who else may be

Interesting to the team (they can give advice/we value their opinion/they have input);

Important to the team or project (key knowledge / have to approve or provide things); and

Interested in the team or project

These people or groups are then represented outside of the circle and the team discusses and agrees how the core team will interact with these parties. This could be fleshed out further into some kind of communication plan, however it is necessary to balance too much detail and complexity against something that is quick to review and update as it changes. Remember: the Agile Charter should be a LIVING artifact.

The second part of Contextis “Committed Resources“. In this instance, we do mean resources/things and NOT people. The proposed activity for this is to draw a timeline arrow with the end point being the mission for the release (agreed in the Purpose section). The team then makes a list of things / activities / skills they will need to achieve the mission and places them on the timeline depending on when they will be required. These can also be ranked in terms of importance. The team then highlights (e.g. using a red dot) resources that the team does not yet have. The idea is that one needs to confirm the missing resources before the time when they are required is reached.

The third and final part of Contextis “Prospective Analysis” or “The analysis of prospects”. Basically this means looking at things that might happen and identifying whether they are risks or opportunities. An easy way to do this, once the team has a list of things that might happen, is to categories them into a quadrant with the vertical axis of [Good]-[Bad] and a horizontal axis of [Won’t Happen]-[Will Happen].

Have you ever done a kick-off with your team? What parts of the Agile Charter have you found particularly useful? Which parts have you not experienced as valuable?